Sep22

Black River Sidecar

Black River Sidecar

The best cocktails are often the simplest.

Last week’s Thursday Drink Night (TDN) revealed a pirate’s chest of great cocktail ideas and a mess of commentary, but in the end we had to choose the best cocktail of the night. Stevi Deter, charming author of Two At The Most, granted us this delight well into the evening. It was met with high praise.

Black River Sidecar

  • 1 1/2oz cognac
  • 3/4oz lemon juice
  • 1/4oz Pimento Dram
  • 1t agave nectar
  • allspice berry tied into a lemon twist, for garnish

Shake with cracked ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Try and fail about 400 times to get the garnish to hang delicately on the rim of the glass.

Stevi Deter, Two At The Most

I asked Stevi about the creation of the cocktail and she had these tidbits to offer:

“For its creation, I’ve been trying to think of how to use the St. Elizabeth’s Allspice Dram. It adds an incredible amount of taste, and smells astonishingly of fresh spices. When thinking of something to do with the cognac I’d just picked up, it seemed natural to see if the allspice dram worked in a sidecar. The dram itself is not enough of a sweetener to balance the sour of the lemon juice, so adding the agave nectar makes for a more balanced drink.

For the name: St. Elizabeth is the second largest parish in Jamaica, and the capital city of the Parish is Black River.”

After mixing a few of these up using both Berry Hill and my homemade pimento dram, I found I needed to up the dram to 1/2oz. From there I could remove the agave nectar. Though if you have St. Elizabeth’s, by all means, stick to the original recipe.

KP Questions

  1. What other non-tiki cocktails have you used Pimento Dram in?
  2. What has been your most successful experiment with a new ingredient?

5 Responses to “Black River Sidecar”

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5 Comments to “ Black River Sidecar”
  1. […] Black River Sidecar was featured on Kaiser Penguin […]

  2. […] I’m thrilled at the wonderful write-up Rick did over at Kaiser Penguin, including a great […]

  3. tiareNo Gravatar says:

    What a beautiful cocktail Stevi and what a good name! i wish i could have been able to attend to the TDN, it seems so fun!

    There`s a reason why you won my cocktail name contest..you really are good with names!

  4. tiareNo Gravatar says:

    Forgot to say that the photo is stunning!

  5. Dr. BambooNo Gravatar says:

    My favorite non-tiki drink (or *is* it tiki??) containing allspice dram is Jasper’s Jamaican Cocktail:

    1 1/4 oz. Cruzan Estate dark rum
    1/2 oz. St. Elizabeth allspice dram
    1/2 oz. fresh lime juice
    1/2 tsp. Fee Bros. Rock Candy syrup

    Shake well with ice cubes. Strain into glass (unspecified..I use a rocks glass containing 3-4 large ice cubes). Dust with nutmeg.

    – from the Tales of the Cocktail recipe “brick”

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About

Kaiser Penguin is a cocktail blog featuring original recipes, homemade ingredients, classic cocktails, and tiki drinks.

Why on Earth did you name your blog “Kaiser Penguin?”

It is a well-known fact that penguins are members of high society and enjoy fine cocktails. Our very own kaiser penguin would like me to mention that he also enjoys various treats from the sea.

Contact: rick@kaiserpenguin.com